The Telegraph

Young people struggle to cope with setbacks as happiness falls to lowest level in a decade 

A young student in a study group suffering from the exhaustion of finals
"This is a generation rapidly losing faith in their ability to achieve their goals in life, who are increasingly wary of and disillusioned with the jobs market and at risk of leaving a wealth of untapped potential in their wake."   Credit: PeopleImages/Digital Vision 

Today's youngsters are the unhappiest in almost a decade because they do not know how to cope with setbacks, research by the Prince's Trust has found. 

The charity, founded by the Prince of Wales, said worries about the future, money, and "not being good enough" were "piling up" on young people aged 16-25. 

Its research found that happiness and confidence in emotional health had dropped to their lowest levels since 2009.

Its index rates young people's emotional health by ranking happiness levels in areas such as work and relationships from 0 to 100. 

In this year's survey the overall average figure was 57, a four-point fall from the previous year and down from 70 when the study was first carried out. 

Almost half of the young people said they did not feel they could cope well with setbacks in life. 

Financial worries were behind the issues experienced by many respondents, with one in three saying that being without a job would put their mental health at risk. 

One in ten said they had lost a job through redundancy or having a contracted terminated or not renewed, or being fired, and 54 per cent said they were worried about their finances. 

61 per cent of young people said they regularly felt stressed, 53 per cent said they regularly felt anxious and 27 per cent said they felt hopeless on a regular basis. Almost half said they had experienced a mental health problem.

Nick Stace, UK chief executive at The Prince’s Trust, said: “It should ring alarm bells for us all that young people are feeling more despondent about their emotional health than ever before.

"This is a generation rapidly losing faith in their ability to achieve their goals in life, who are increasingly wary of and disillusioned with the jobs market and at risk of leaving a wealth of untapped potential in their wake.

“One of the most important things we can do to stem this flow is to show young people that it’s worth having high aspirations, that opportunities to earn a good living and progress in a career are out there and that they’ll be supported along the way to live, learn and earn."

The charity said it would work with mental health charity Young Minds to review its programmes so it could incorporate aspects which would help participants' mental health. 

The charity, founded in 1976, works with disadvantaged young people to help them get a job or continue their education. 

Figures released earlier this week by the National Association of Schoolmasters Union of Women Teachers suggested that 96 per cent of teachers had worked with children who were experiencing mental health issues.